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Should I be Improving Domain Authority?

I work for a company that deals in Collectibles and runs a collectibles news service. In the UK our site ranks on the first page for the keyword "collectibles". We wish to strengthen this position and increase our rank on the US Google.

I'm going to be working on Keyword Optimisation for the site, to hopefully make many of our pages more relevant and improve the rank. However I feel we may be held back by our Domain Authority score. Our Google PageRank and MozRank are both low due to the fact we don't have a huge amount of external links to the site.

Is this something that will potentially hold us back? Should I be working on improving this as before the site optimisation?

We are well set up for a content based strategy due to "News" nature of the site. My ownly concern with link building is i've heard that it could potentially negatively effect us.

Or is the risk of link building only really associated with black hat methods?

One last thing. I've been using the Google keyword Tool to judge competition for specific search terms. Is this useful for organic search? Or is it only relevant for PPC?

6 Responses

Gear your website up onsite correctly first then begin link building so the site can absorb the link equity freely and correctly.

Blackhat methods are your only main concern and Blackhat methods and what to avoid are all over the web, if you just search on Google.

The keyword tool is pretty inaccurate, it can be an indication though, when using it make sure that "Exact" is ticked on the left hand side and not "Broad". I would recommend looking at Google Insights and Trends as well.

Well done on ranking for Collectibles in the UK it is a competitive space with lots of search – I didn’t see you at number one however so I would suggest you check with personalized search turned off.

However I feel we may be held back by our Domain Authority score.

Now you mention Domain Authority. Your domain authority is currently 32 so growth is of course Welcome. A lot of that comes with linking from high authority sites. Your site looks like is a powerful source of information on collectibles on first glance but on closer inspection it also looks like that a lot of it is curated news. I would think about developing your own news and information.

Your blog also is on the WordPress.com platform and is not self hosted. I would work to correct this and bring the blog back onto your local site as you are moving traffic off of your main site.

We are well set up for a content based strategy due to "News" nature of the site. My ownly concern with link building is i've heard that it could potentially negatively effect us.

I am not sure what you mean here. Lnk building is something you should be thinking of even through organically spreading good news and articles that people link to and share on the Net. If you produce an excellent article with an interesting slant on a collectible then it may get added juice and get links.

Or is the risk of link building only really associated with black hat methods?

Link building done well and professionally (as I with the ethics of a professional as opposed to paid) should be part of your marketing plan. Many companies now employ full time Internet marketing experts doing just this as part of their brief. Link building is not equal to black hat.

One last thing. I've been using the Google keyword Tool to judge competition for specific search terms. Is this useful for organic search? Or is it only relevant for PPC?

On accuracy of the Keyword tool irldonalb is right and the tool is inaccurate and should be used along with Insights and some of the tools here on SEOMOZ if you are a member. But it is still a good indicator and shows the level of activity.

It is relevant to both search and PPC. Google never claims for it to be 100% accurate either but it is used by most people these days as on of their go to tools for their keyword research.

Finally it IS worth while reading though here a bit (if you havent done so already for more ideas and tips for your SEO campaign. I visit it regularly and it is one of the best references.

I'll make sure I now set Google Keywords Tool to Exact match, as I was previously using broad it is clear to see how far away the too statistics are.

In terms of generating our own news and information. We do try and do that as much as possible, we manage to get interviews, such as an interview with Tammy Allen, and Depeche Modes Alan Wilder. On certain occasions this is not possible, we can't visit all auctions etc. So we rely on other sources to get the best information possible.

We do have an investments page, with plenty of resources created by the company to help people make the best choices when it comes to their investments. But in some ways this may be slightly buried. We also started the blog as a new way of generating traffic, adding in more opinion, hopefully giving making things a bit more readbility.

For link building, I was thinking along the lines of researching relevant sites, asking to be a guest blogger, or providing them with some unique content. Or in some situations asking for a link if its appropriate. (We get plenty of link requests, so I know how not to do it!)

Currently i'm looking at improving the rank of our Investment Newsletter page. SEOMoz gives it a grade A in the on page optimisation tool. But we are only on page 3, where as two of our competitors are on page 1 with equal or lower grading.

So do you believe the main reason for this to be our lack of links?

If so how would you suggest encouraging links to an obscure page like "Investment Newsletter"?

For link building, I was thinking along the lines of researching relevant sites, asking to be a guest blogger, or providing them with some unique content.

This is a good tactci and looking at your site I am sure that you can provide this. It takes time and you have to put the miles in I think.

Currently i'm looking at improving the rank of our Investment Newsletter page. SEOMoz gives it a grade A in the on page optimisation tool. But we are only on page 3, where as two of our competitors are on page 1 with equal or lower grading.

So do you believe the main reason for this to be our lack of links?

The page grading tool is a Get the basics sorted out tool and I think personally it helps you focus on the message of the page. The next leve is to look at what is on the page. I often go back to pages (and do this nearly every day) and ask mysef was I drinking when I did a certain page.

I would seriously work at getting theblog back in the mains page as when you click away you are well... away..

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